North Africa and Syria

The North Africa and Syria Educational Activities booklet features a selection of inquiry-based activities to encourage student exploration of the commemorative publication Australians in World War II: North Africa and Syria.

Teachers using these materials are encouraged to select specific activities, parts of activities or the broad selection of primary and secondary materials within this learning resource to suit their own purposes.

Australians in World War II: North Africa and Syria—Education Activities

Chapter 7: Siege of Tobruk

On 13 April, the Germans decided to attack the sector held by the 2/17th Battalion. At 11 pm about thirty infantrymen with two small field guns, a mortar and eight machine guns dug themselves in about 100 meters to the east of the post, nearest to where a gap in the anti-tank ditch was to be blown. The Germans brought their weapons to bear on the Australian post, which returned fire. The post commander, Lieutenant Frederick Mackell, then led Corporal Jack Edmondson and five other men into position to assault the enemy from the flank. Yelling and throwing grenades, the Australians charged the enemy, who turned their weapons on the party and opened fire. Edmondson was seriously wounded in the stomach by a burst from a machine gun that also hit him in the neck. Still he ran on under heavy fire and killed one enemy soldier with his bayonet. When Mackell had his bayonet in one of the enemy, who grasped him about the legs, and was then attacked from behind, Edmondson, in spite of his wounds, immediately responded to the call for help and killed both Germans, saving Mackell’s life. Edmondson died of his wounds the next day and was awarded the Victoria Cross, the first received by an Australian in World War II.

At 5.20 am on 14 April, armour of the German 5th Armoured Regiment entered the perimeter through the gap near Mackell’s post and proceeded to make a deep northerly penetration. The German 8th Machine Gun Battalion followed. The Australian infantry had been instructed to avoid attracting the attention of enemy armour, but to engage the following infantry when the tanks had passed. British artillery engaged the tanks and their accompanying infantry. The Australian infantry on the perimeter shot down the German infantry and gunners as they advanced to join the tanks, which by 7 am were being attacked on all sides by artillery and defending tanks. The Germans withdrew, leaving seventeen wrecked tanks, 150 dead and 250 prisoners within the perimeter. In the meantime, the Germans had continued their advance east and had taken Bardia and reached the Egyptian border. On 14 April, Cyrenaica Command ceased to exist and Lavarack returned to command the 7th Division. With Australians being the majority of the Tobruk garrison, Morshead became garrison commander.

Rommel put off making another attempt at breaking the Tobruk perimeters until he had built up his forces besieging Tobruk. German air attacks targeted Tobruk harbour and its defences, to hinder the garrison’s resupply coming in by sea, while Italian infantry was given the task of maintaining the pressure on the perimeter. The garrison responded by strengthening the perimeter and mounting aggressive patrols, which led to a spectacular success during the night of 16 April. Just before nightfall a 2/48th patrol discovered an Italian battalion approaching the Australian perimeter. British artillery scattered the attackers in disorder and then prevented them escaping by laying down a heavy curtain of fire behind them. In all 803 prisoners were captured. The entry in the section dealing with identification of enemy units in the divisional intelligence summary read ‘1 Bn 62 Regt—Trento Div—Completely captured’.

On the afternoon of 30 April, the posts at Hill 209 held by the 2/24th Battalion were shelled and bombed. German pioneers and machine gunners advanced at dusk, disarmed mines and blew gaps in the wire. Seven perimeter posts were captured during the night, and by next morning some eighty German tanks had penetrated the perimeter. Half the tanks advanced eastward and ran into a minefield, while the other half advanced south along the perimeter until stopped by artillery and tanks. Severe fighting continued in the afternoon and by dark the Germans held fifteen posts on a 5000-metre front. The 2/48th Battalion suffered heavy losses in a counter-attack that night, but forced the enemy on to the defensive. With more than half the tanks of the attacking German regiment knocked out, Rommel decided not to press the attack. However, the Germans and Italians had seized a large salient about 5 kilometres wide and 5 kilometres deep, at a cost of 950 men. The garrison suffered 800 casualties.

Maintaining supplies was a further challenge throughout the campaign. Water was extremely limited, with soldiers receiving only one water bottle per day for drinking and bathing. Owen Curtis recalled picking up Italian water bottles from the wounded to use what was left. Resupply was also problematic—Owen recalling that the trucks could only come in at night and invariably attracted enemy attention due to their rattling:

So the trucks would come whizzing down with this water and they’d have a forty-four gallon drum of salt water and a forty-four gallon drum of fresh water. One was for the cooking and eating and drinking, and one was for your washing. And they’d wheel these off and away they’d go without stopping because to save the Jerries dropping down their shells. And when you’ve rushed up and you’d think, ‘Oh, thank God for that’, and you’d open up and you’d find you had two salt water drums and so you couldn’t get any more until the next night till they came around.1

Both sides, particularly in the salient, now consolidated their positions. In mid May, Wavell ordered Operation Brevity, a limited offensive against weak enemy forces on the border between Egypt and Libya. The objective was to gain territory for the offensive planned in June, to relieve Tobruk and to reduce enemy forces on the frontier. The operation was launched on 15 May with three mixed infantry and armoured columns, with a troop of the Australian 12th Anti-Tank Battery attached to each column. The initial gains were mainly lost to enemy counter-attacks, and on 16 May British forces were withdrawn to the strategically important Halfaya Pass, the only success of the operation. However, eleven days later, Halfaya Pass was recaptured by the Germans.

Back in Australia women like Josephine Johnson, whose husband, John Johnson, was with the 2/23rd Battalion, waited with anxiety for news of their loved ones serving in the campaign. Not knowing the exact whereabouts of John, she scanned the news reports in search of clues as to his safety. In April, while John was serving in Tobruk, Josephine wrote to him:

Darling, I hope you were not among the mob who raided Bardia the other day. I have worried ever since as we were told sixty failed to return, but I suppose had you been among those I would have heard by this … every minute of every day and night you are in my mind. I dream every time I do go to sleep about you it is a very anxious time for all, the ones whose men have just sailed are worried, but not the same worry as to know that any minute one is likely to get a cable—well it is just plain hell.2

Within a month Josephine’s fears would become a reality; on 17 May 1941 John died as a result of wounds sustained in action. The cable Josephine feared arrived on 12 June, advising her husband had been ‘fatally wounded in the course of his duty’. Grief reverberated through the family. John’s son Len recalled after hearing the news ‘a strange and painful feeling of loss’ and an ‘unfamiliar emptiness’.3

John’s mother, Agnes, wrote a poem expressing the profound grief of losing her child in war:

Far away in a foreign land
Across the dark blue sea
Our Johnny sleeps with comrades brave
At a place they call Tobruk.4

While the Johnsons and so many other families struggled with their grief, the campaign moved on. Operation Battleaxe, the offensive to clear eastern Cyrenaica of German and Italian forces and lift the siege of Tobruk, was launched on 15 June. The British 7th Armoured Division and the 4th Indian Division assaulted strong German and Italian defensive positions. On the first day only one of three British thrusts was successful, for the loss of more than half of the British armoured tanks. The following day, German counter-attacks were successful on the western flank but repelled in the centre. The British on the third day, withdrawing just ahead of a German encircling movement, narrowly avoided disaster. The Tobruk garrison had resumed aggressive raiding and patrols in mid May and by early July from the enemy-held salient had been whittled down by nearly two kilometres in the west, reducing the depth of the bulge in the perimeter.